Monday, September 24, 2007

One sad thing about writing, as I often have, media tie-in novels, is that they have a tendency to last only as long as a given licensing agreement. That means that most of them have a very short shelf-life. In a year or two or three, they're out of print, and with very rare exceptions, they never come back. They're owned by whoever licensed the particular property. You don't get the rights back, and in general, the license owner has little or no reason to reprint the book.

Sometimes, that's a blessing, but other times, when you're especially pleased with a project, it's a very sad thing. For me, the latter was true of the two novels I wrote based on the since-canceled Marvel comic book, "Generation-X." They were fun to write, I was pleased with how they turned out, and I would have loved to have written more if I'd had the chance. Alas, I didn't, and now I never will.

But books have an after-life of their own, drifting through garage sales, used book-stores, eBay and the occasional library. Tonight (thanks to a Google Alert I have set up to search for my name) I was surprised to discover a new web review of the second of my Generation-X novels, Genogoths. (Follow the link, and you'll also find my extended back-story there on the writing of the two Marvel tie-in novels I did.)

Now, the reviewer didn't declare it the classic of the ages, but they did read the book and seemingly enjoyed it. Even better, they decided to share the experience with others (and incidentally, me). I'm not sure how a writer can ask for more, especially this late in the game.

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About J. Steven York

Steve is a nationally best-selling author of short-fiction and many novels . He's dabbled in such fictional universes as Robert E. Howard's Conan, Star Trek, MechWarrior, Transformers, and Marvel's X-Men, and has also written for computer games, but these days he's focusing more on his original fiction and related projects.

He's the creator of a weekly web-comic, Minions at Work. He has orignal short stories appearing in several upcoming mass-market anthologies.

He's married to fellow novelist (and sometime collaborator) Christina F. York. They live overlooking the Pacific on the Oregon coast. They maintain a shared website that serves as the hub of their multi-media empire, www.yorkwriters.com.